First Single Player or Multiplayer (and Quit). Each has its own 3 save slots, each its own file, with Back to the choice. The Multiplayer page hosts its saves (see Multiplayer) and has Join a Friend's Game. Coming back from New Company returns to the same page. A slot with a save shows its company name (in the company color), then its home port, money and game date ("Rome · $2,500,000 · Sat 1 Jan 2000, 00:00"), then its storms, seasonal closures and fastest game speed ("Moderate storms · Seasonal closures · up to 8x"); click it to continue that company, which then autosaves to the same slot. An empty slot says New Game. Each saved slot has a Delete button (with a confirmation). Saves that can't be loaded show greyed out with the reason and can only be deleted.
Loading screens: a dark sea with ships of every kind sailing across it, in from off one side and out off another and back on somewhere else, "Maritime Empire" and "Loading" with its dots, over everything. Shown when the game opens, till the title screen's scenes are loaded and the world's art is built (about 3 s), and when a save is continued, a company founded or a game joined, till the game is up and its map warm; at least 0.9 s, then fading out over 0.45 s. The scene changes behind it once it has been drawn, so the stall of building the map happens out of sight.
New Game → "Found your company": enter a company name, choose its headquarters (its home port: "Choose your headquarters: click a port on the map. Your company starts there and new ships are delivered there...", the pick shown as "Headquarters: Rome, Italy") and a company color, pick the fastest game speed the company may run at, pick its storms (None, Moderate or Harsh, default Moderate; see Weather), how many AI rivals and how well they play (see AI rivals) and whether to have Seasonal closures (on by default), choose whether to have the Tutorial (on by default; see Tutorial), then "Next: Your CEO": make the CEO, drawn in a clean cartoon style (bold dark outlines, flat colours with one soft shade, a big round head with big eyes) standing head to shoes beside a name box (with Random name), Male or Female buttons, Height and Build sliders, then the face parts in one column and the outfit in another, each stepped through with < and >: 10 skin colors, 8 eye shapes and 9 eye colors (separate), 10 noses, 10 mouths, 13 hair styles, 14 hair colors, 10 facial hair options (none included; a female body never gets a random beard), 18 tops leaning to the sea (captain's jacket, sailor stripes, pea coat, yellow oilskin, fisherman's jumper, dress whites, deck tee, life vest, wetsuit, officer's shirt, tropical shirt, pirate coat, then tees, hoodie, suit, flannel, hi-vis), 12 bottoms (navy trousers, sailor bell-bottoms, oilskin trousers, deck shorts, wetsuit legs, jeans, khakis, cargo, skirts, denim shorts), 10 shoes (deck shoes, sea boots, wellies, barefoot, boots, trainers, dress shoes, sandals), 10 glasses (none included) and 13 hats (none included: captain's cap, sailor cap, sou'wester, tricorne, bandana, watch cap, straw hat, bucket, baseball, top hat, hard hat, cowboy), with Randomize looks, then Back or Found Company. Random sliders are the sum of two rolls (mostly middling). The CEO is saved with the company. Storms and seasonal closures are saved with the company. The home port is picked on a globe filling the left of the screen (opening on the whole globe round Rome, the default), beside the form: only the 79 starting ports can be picked, named and colored by kind: shining bright green for the 5 "Excellent starts", the best in 5 different market regions (Conakry, Dublin, Shanghai, Cabo San Lucas, Rome); green for the next 20 "Great starts" (West Africa, the China coast and Taiwan, Korea, the Irish Sea and Biscay, the western Mediterranean, Manzanillo); yellow for the 20 "Fair starts" after them (Tunis, Busan, Praia, Marseille, Tonga and Samoa, the US East Coast, southern Italy and Sardinia, Barcelona, Monrovia, Durres, Misrata, Lazaro Cardenas, Madeira and the Azores, Kaohsiung); red for 20 "Hard starts", well-known ports where a Scooter still clears a thin profit (Jebel Ali, Hamad, Colombo, Santos, Rio, Tokyo, Yokohama, Dalian, Tianjin, Honolulu, Odesa, St Petersburg, Copenhagen, Tema, Balboa, King George Island, Constanta, Port Klang, Maputo; Singapore in place of Darwin, whose only Scooter run is to Dili in another region); and blue for the 14 Great Lakes ports, whose note, in blue, warns that they're a real challenge, far harder than any coast: every winter (with seasonal closures) the Seaway, Welland Canal and Soo Locks shut, Dec 31 to late March, cutting the lakes off from the sea, and from year 2 the lake ports freeze in too, mid-January to late February, unless you station an icebreaker (from $8M, level 8). Each recommended port's note gives its best Scooter run and about what each Scooter makes a minute. The form's legend explains the colors; every other port is a faint dot that can't be clicked. The picked port has a gold ring, and its name and its note (in its kind's color, up to six lines; all of it in its tooltip) show in the form. The ports not offered are still normal ports. The color is used for the company name in the top bar and the rings around the HQ and hubs.
Maritime Empire